Nvidia's Tony Tamasi says new consoles are good news for PC gamers

Nvidia senior vice president Tony Tamasi says he’s happy that the new consoles from Sony and Microsoft are finally here. With additional details and pricing just recently announced at E3, the industry is abuzz with the recent news, as media outlets and gaming pundits weigh in on the information that was disclosed.

Tamasi told The Verge that the new consoles are “nothing but goodness for the PC.” This perspective doesn’t come as a surprise from a PC gaming perspective.

As consoles have dominated the gaming market for years, developers have designed games that maximized performance on now 8 year-old hardware. This has often left PC gamers with ports of console games that don’t come close to taking full advantage of latest-generation computer hardware.

Even though there is still a significant gap in the capabilities between the PS4 and Xbox One and those of the latest computers, developers will now be able to build games that are tens, if not hundreds, of times more resource intensive than in previous generation consoles. “Developers can now build really awesome content that can then scale to the PC,” said Tamasi.

Note that Nvidia's graph above highlights a 2.5x performance differential between the GTX Titan and the PS4. That's great for all current Titan owners, but relatively speaking, it's a tough comparison to take seriously. The GTX Titan costs $1000, and any computer worth putting a Titan in is going to cost at least a couple thousand. In contrast, the PS4 will be on sale for $399, which puts it at just 13 percent the cost of a $3000 Titan machine.

What doesn’t make as much practical sense about Tamasi remarking he's pleased with the arrival of the new consoles, is the economical ramifications of their production. AMD beat out Nvidia for contracts for both the Xbox One and the PS4. And, on top of that, AMD is supplying the Wii U’s graphics chip as well. For now, apparently Nvidia is content with the universal benefit to PC gaming.